Georgia on My Mind and Other Places (21 page)

We came last, after Nataree, with Johannes clutching his copy of the
Liber Abaci
. It seemed pathetic, and I wondered what sort of reception we were likely to get. Ivory and jewels as gifts, then a beautiful new wife, and then us, a dung-smelling servant and a man carrying one battered book with the world’s most boring information inside it.

The greeting hall itself was enough to unnerve me. It was over forty paces long, and the floor and walls were covered with the most beautiful tapestries and carpets I ever saw. Each one depicted some aspect of the life of the Great Khan—hunting, hawking, receiving royal guests, bestowing honors, or sitting in judgment on cases of noble wrongdoing. The rugs of the greeting hall were so thick that our advance across them was almost silent.

At the far end of the hall the Great Khan was already present. He was sitting on a carved wood and ivory throne, painted in gold and brown, and as we all came in he did a surprising thing. He stood up, and then to my amazement he walked past the Indian merchant princes, past Ahmes and Maseed and Nataree, and right up to Johannes. He stared at us without speaking. His robes were fine gold cloth, woven perhaps from the thread of the Auromancers that we had come so far to study, and he carried a long golden staff.

“Great Emperor,” I said, and my voice cracked on the first word. “It is an honor to be here at this great court. We bring no material gifts, but our respect is not less for that. We hope we bring something more precious than rubies or gold. We bring knowledge.”

His face was stern and terrible, with a long, straggly mustache across a thin upper lip. But then he smiled, just a little. “A king can have enough gems and jewels,” he said. “But no man can ever have enough knowledge. And I receive wives on many days, but strangers from so far away are a rarity. Welcome.”

Johannes was smiling also, not understanding a word. My knees were wobbling. All I could say—croak, that’s a better word, for my voice had chosen the worst possible moment to begin breaking to a man’s tones—the one word I could utter was, “Thankyou.”

Fortunately it did not matter, because the Great Khan had taken the
Liber Abaci
from Johannes’s hands and was already turning to the other groups. Our audience was not over, but to avoid a slight to anyone, all would be greeted formally before longer discussions began.

The group accompanying Nataree presented to the Great Khan a set of gorgeous goblets of finely chased gold, and equally fine plates on which they were seated. He took them, made a little speech of formal thanks, and called at once for wine. A servant hurried forward with a glass flask and filled the cups, passing one each to half a dozen of the surrounding nobles.

One of Nataree’s party offered a toast, to the long life and prosperity of the Great Khan, and lifted his cup. Kublai smiled, but instead of drinking he passed his own goblet to a dark-skinned servant standing next to him. The black man sniffed cautiously at the wine and poured a few drops into a little beaker that he held. We waited. When nothing happened after a few seconds, the man sipped a little wine and finally nodded. He handed the goblet back to Kublai Khan.

While this had been happening, the whole assembly was frozen—until the Great Khan moved, no one could move. When he finally took the goblet, and lifted it in front of him, everyone relaxed and lifted his own glass.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maseed reach up to scratch his left ear. Inevitably, I looked across at Ahmes, and at that very moment he dropped the brass shield from its velvet cushion. It made a hollow, brazen boom as it hit the thick carpet. Everyone turned to see what was causing the noise.

Everyone except me. I knew what would happen next, and already I had turned to look at Maseed. The flick of the finger against the thumb was a tiny movement in the direction of the Great Khan. I waited for the familiar rattle that signified the arrival of a pellet within a cup. When it did not come I thought for a moment that he must have missed his target; and then I realized that a full goblet of wine would silence the sound completely.

One of Nataree’s guards had bent over to pick up the dropped ornamental shield, while another was giving Ahmes a vicious cut across the shoulders with a whip.

The Great Khan, after the few moments of distraction, ignored what was happening to Ahmes. He offered a brief and formal statement of thanks and a welcome to Karakorum, and again raised the goblet to his lips. As he did so I leaned close to Johannes and whispered, “He did it, same as I told you. Threw something—into the Great Khan’s cup.”

I spoke in Latin, probably with some brainless idea that my insolence in speaking in front of the Great Khan would somehow be less in a foreign language.

Johannes had no such inhibitions, and for once he was not off in his clouds of calculation. He looked at me for one split second. Then he jumped forward, pointed at the Khan’s goblet, and cried out what I knew but dared not think: “Don’t drink that cup! It’s poisoned.”

He was lucky he wasn’t run through on the spot. Not knowing the language, he had shouted in Persian. Half the Khan’s guards had no idea what he was saying. But then Nataree took an instant cue from Johannes, and she shouted out, too, in Turkic: “Don’t drink. Poison!”

There was a tremendous hubbub. The Khan had the gold goblet at his lips. Now he jerked it away. The soldiers around him drew their swords, but of course they didn’t know what to do next. They had seen nothing, and had no idea who to attack.

Maseed, standing four paces away, tried to look innocent, but I recovered my voice, pointed at him, and cried, “That one! He threw a pellet into the cup, when you were all looking at the dropped shield.”

Well, Maseed was too wily to run, but it did him no good. After five minutes questioning of me and, through me, Johannes, Kublai Khan had learned all that we knew and surmised. He ordered that Maseed and Ahmes be taken away and forced to drink from the same goblet. Maseed began to scream and beg for mercy. But as the Great Khan said, if the goblet were not poisoned, then no harm would come to them.

It showed us that he was a merciful Khan. Whatever happened to Maseed and Ahmes, it would be better than a death by slow torture.

They were dragged away. Kublai Khan turned again to me and Johannes.

“Tell your master this,” he said to me, as calmly as though assassination attempts happened every day. “I owe him my life. Tell him to ask any favor, and if it is in my power I swear that it will be granted.”

Well, this was the moment when I knew that Johannes and I would succeed brilliantly in our mission. The Great Khan was promising it. Auromancers, Templars, Quarry Ants, we would learn all there was to know about every one of them.

Johannes was silent for a long time when I told him the Great Khan’s promise. The whole court waited. At last he turned away and looked at Nataree. She nodded, with one slow movement of her head, and closed her eyes as though in prayer.

Johannes looked back at the Great Khan. “I would like,” he said. He paused, and his voice straightened. “I would like to take this woman, Nataree. I ask that you allow us to travel freely, she and I, through your territories, toward the rising sun and beyond, on to the end of the world to seek true knowledge.”

Everyone was silent, waiting for a translation. My heart was a lump of stone. I had to pass on those words, but it was too much for me. I stood, tongue-tied, until at last one of the merchants chimed in to translate what Johannes had said.

Then the Great Khan frowned. “Nataree?” he said. He looked at Johannes in incomprehension.

An old adviser came forward and whispered something in his ear. Kublai Khan nodded, but he looked no less astonished. He stepped closer to Johannes.

“Honored guest, you have saved my life. For far less than you have done, a hundred women would be yours. That gift is not sufficient. The woman Nataree is nothing to me—why should she be, when I never saw her before today? Ask again, and ask more, much more, or you will shame me as the Great Khan of the Tartars.”

Again the merchant translated for Johannes, and at last he nodded. This was it, surely, the moment when he would ask for the answers to all our questions. But he did not. Instead, he moved to Nataree’s side, put his arm around her—and turned to point at me!

“That young man” (a man at last! But how bitter the feeling) “is Dari. He is as dear to me as my own life. He has no parents, no family. Would you take him, Great Khan, and give him a home and an education here, in Karakorum?”

The Great Khan stared at me while the request was translated, and I felt a shiver from top to toe.

“Come here,” he said at last. “Come close.”

I walked forward, and began to kneel before him. He caught my arm in a grip that could have broken it, and would not allow me to sink to the floor. Before I knew what was happening, he pulled me close and kissed me on the forehead, then on both cheeks. He looked around him.

“Dari belongs here,” he said. “From this day he is not Dari, he is
Dari Mangu
, and he is a member of my own family.” And then he went on—the thing that made the whole court gasp aloud: “Dari Mangu is my son, as much as any of my sons. Like them, he is in the line of succession to become the Emperor, next ruler of Karakorum, the Great Khan of the Tartars. Come, all of you, and offer loyalty and obeisance.”

Man after man came forward.

I stood there quaking, the smell of dung still strong upon me, while promises of love and servitude poured into my ears. After half a minute, I began to weep.

* * *

That was one year ago. The snows have come again to Karakorum, but Johannes and Nataree have not returned. They went off to the east, to the great sea and beyond.

I think about them always. Did Johannes find a faith, I wonder, somewhere in the breathing world, to replace what he lost long ago in Magdeburg? Did Nataree show him, as she promised, all the kingdoms of the earth?

I do not know.

I thought that Nataree was a witch-woman when first I met her, and I think she is a witch-woman still. But now I suspect that every woman is a witch-woman, casting their spells on men.

I do not hate Nataree, but I resent her greater freedom. Even as a gift-girl to the Great Khan, she could do what I could not. When she held those long, intense conversations with Johannes as we traveled from the Great Desert to Karakorum, she surely fell in love with him. That was easy to do. But having fallen, she could then speak her love. Whereas I . . .

I could not, because he would not allow it. The Holy Church of Johannes told him that love from me was anathema, a mortal sin, a love so forbidden that it was wrong even to say its name.

I was trapped. I loved, as much as she, perhaps more than she, but I could not speak without making him feel revulsion.

And so I live on, in the court of the Great Khan. I have power, I have luxury, I have influence. Perhaps one day I will in truth become the Great Khan, Emperor, Lord of the Tartars, ruler of Karakorum and of half the known world.

Power, glory, honor, possessions. Those are all mine. They feel like nothing. Nothing but waiting, waiting, until the convergence of the Great Arcs at last brings its own peace.

It was right for Johannes to leave his old Church, with its cold Christ, its stern laws, its bleak Heaven. There was nothing there for him, nothing for anyone who loves.

But if he had to leave that church, why could he not have left it for me?

Afterword to “Beyond the Golden Road”

Susan Shwartz, the editor of the book in which this story first appeared, shares with me an interest (better call it an obsession) in the Taklamakan Desert of western China. When she was putting
Arabesques
together she asked me to write something using that general part of the world, creating a romantic tale somewhere between Persia and Mongolia.

I protested, “But I just sold a story like that, “The Courts of Xanadu,” to Gardner Dozois at
Asimov’s
magazine!”

She said, “So that proves you can do it.”

I, recognizing superior guile, retreated and wrote “Beyond the Golden Road.”

Reviewers of
Arabesques
did not know what to make of my story. The rest of the book was populated by djinni, houris, demons, phoenixes, rocs, viziers, caravanserai, and all the other mainstays of the Arabian Nights. The other stories were clearly high fantasy. On the other hand, “Beyond the Golden Road” is pure science fiction. I do not know of one word in it that goes beyond what was known or believed about 1250 a.d. For example, the
Liber Abaci
of Leonardo of Pisa, better known as Fibonacci, appeared in 1202 and explained the virtues of the Arabic system of numeration when compared with roman numerals. In the next half century it achieved wide acceptance among the mathematicians of Europe.

In the main, reviewers of the book ignored my story. This rather annoyed me, because for one thing I was very fond of it, and for another I had found it difficult to write. The narrator’s character was a hard one to define, plus he had to tell everything he heard while not understanding a good deal of it.

Long after the story was published, a medium-level friend (defined as one I would willingly share lunch or dinner with, but not a hotel room at a convention) read it and said to me, “I didn’t know you were gay.”

Nor did I. But that remark at last made up for any reviewer neglect. Dari was what I had hoped he would be.

Health Care System

Thomas Matlock drove out to the Greenwood estate one foggy morning in late December. Money was the bait, but curiosity was initially a stronger lure.

It was three days after Christmas, and the roads were almost deserted. The limousine wound its way up to the highest point of the Catoctin State Park, then began a cautious descent over roads treacherous with moisture and patches of ground ice. At Matlock’s request, the car slowed at an overlook when they were still a mile and a half from the estate. He lowered the window and peered out. The valley below was covered in dense ground mist, but the four wings of the mansion jutted high above it, light gray stone and steep slate roofs. Matlock inspected all that he could see and guessed at the rest. Five hundred acres of land inside the nine-foot fence, maybe another thousand outside it. A hundred-plus rooms to the house. Four gatehouses and guest “cottages,” each one bigger than Matlock’s own suburban villa.